


waiting for this test to end

by recycledstars



Category: Castle
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-11
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-19 03:08:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/878713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recycledstars/pseuds/recycledstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sexed up Beckett happened on purpose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	waiting for this test to end

She starts wearing make up again - proper make up, which adds fifteen minutes to her commute - when Castle hands her the file in the hospital. 

She empties it into the trash, watches old coffee spill from a full cup over the photographs of her mother's lifeless body and walks out of the hospital and into Bloomingdales with single-minded focus. She blows far too much money from her "college fund": which is what they still call it, even though she's long done with school and student loans. (It's a trust fund but that makes it sound a lot more impressive than it is.)

She's meant to be keeping that money, meant to have set it aside like the sensible girl that she is, or pretends to be because that's who her mother wanted her to be. But she blows it on clothes and make up and heels that'll make men want to fuck her. It's armour. She doesn't want to be seen. She wants to be a pretty face in high heels being bent over an otherwise unused dining table in some nameless Wall Street suit's apartment. 

She goes straight from the department store to a bar and does just that, rides the subway home after carrying the ridiculous shoes, ruining her stockings. 

 

She drinks a lot of vodka that summer. And rips all of the pages out of the first Richard Castle novel she ever bought out of spite. 

 

By the fall she's taken up running again, channels all her rage into more constructive pursuits - disciplines her body, tells herself she can discipline her mind, banish all thoughts of him, of her mother's murder.

There's still some drunken anonymous sex, but mostly on Fridays, mostly because she had forgotten how good it feels to have power over men. (They want her and she can say no and they're so fucking grateful when she doesn't, it's pathetic.) 

 

He comes back, the case comes back, the ghost that haunts her never really left. She keeps running, keeps painting her face, studying herself in the mirror without ever really meeting her own eyes. She keeps sauntering in the heels knowing he's watching her ass, grows out her hair so that the people she sleeps with can pull it. 

It's all empty of course, but at least she looks damn good doing it.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from November by Azure Ray, Kate Beckett's anthem. Listen [here](http://youtu.be/l9rob1rwUz0).


End file.
